The development of endovascular intervention is a big leap in the history of the human medical science. However, currently, the insertion of a guide catheter for endovascular intervention has to be conducted in a “blind” way relying on the operator's hand tactility and experience. As a result, blood vessel wall injuries are often caused, or even worse, ruptures of blood vessel occur, which may lead to significant accidents such as massive bleeding. For this reason, there is a need in this art to develop an interventional catheter with sensing abilities for clinical use which can prevent blood vessel wall injuries.
Publication No. CN103041495A filed by the applicant of the present invention discloses the invention of a tactile probe for endovascular intervention using sensors with electrode-based switches to detect in which one(s) of seventeen possible directions the probe comes into contact with a blood vessel wall. It solves the problems arising from use of the conventional blind insertion method, i.e., inability to accurately detect a contact of the interventional catheter with a blood vessel wall and inability to identify the direction in which the contact occurs.
Nevertheless, during practical use of the tactile probe, it was found that, while the probe could indicate the direction in which the catheter comes into contact with the blood vessel wall, the magnitude of the contact force remained unknown. In practical use, it was often the case that, upon the interventional catheter coming into contact with an obstacle in a blood vessel such as a physiological or pathological narrow site, although the interventional procedure would have been continued without hurting the vascular wall by slightly increasing the contact force, as the probe could only detect the presence of the obstacle but could not tell if it could pass through the obstacle with a slight increase in the force, the continuation of the procedure had to be given up.
In view of this, there is a need for an improved tactile probe for endovascular intervention which can detect both the direction and magnitude of the contact force.